These will fit into racks ju-u-ust fine. We don't need Xserves anymore. Expansion slots? Who needs em? I have no doubt of the power within that little can. However, can the software take advantage of that power? I know from past experience (at least in the video and rendering side of things), it doesn't take advantage of all the CPU power available to it.

Apple have always put form and function together in a successful way that few if any other computer manufactures have.

My old dead G4 sitting in the garage is beautiful (IMO) industrial design. It has huge handles top and bottom smoothly incorporated into the design. The G5 or "cheese grater" as it was called also has handles incorporated into its design so the handle issue is just Apple staying with its design philosophy.

I tend to agree with the rest of the video presenters points. Apple have continued to dumb down their pro software such as the new Final Cut Pro which seems nothing more than an upgraded iMove and thus making it accessible to the prosumer market. They maybe doing the same with their hardware regarding function. I like the new design of the Mac Pro, though it does remind me of a stylish wine bucket. I bought my 17" Macbook pro just before Apple stopped production. I image it was just to big to be portable enough....anyway as its my main music, photography and design computer I have USB, Firewire & Thunderbolt cables all over the place so the lack of internal connectivity in this new Mac Pro would not bother me.

Im not in the market for a new mac but I will be curious to see how this is received.

« Last Edit: November 11, 2013, 05:44:20 AM by Julio Di Benedetto »

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I see both sides of the argument, I guess. Also, since I'm in the market for a new Mac and have always owned at least one of Apple's "Pro" line machines, I'm giving this plenty of consideration.

It's hard to dispute that this Mac Pro has much less (almost nothing, really) in the way of internal expansion options. That's always been half the point of the Pro line. There are all different kinds of "pro" users -- video editors, photographers, audio types, coders -- and they all have unique needs for the kinds of interfaces and accessories they need to add to their workstations.

Some of us -- people like me -- will do just fine with a Thunderbolt breakout box. I want a big monitor (or maybe two, or three), lots of storage (at least some of it fast), plenty of USB ports, and a way to connect a firewire audio interface. A Mac Pro with one of the several Thunderbolt breakout boxes would encompass all my needs. I can't really complain much about the $250 or $300 for the Thunderbolt device if I'm considering spending $4k on the computer itself.

I suspect many "Pro" users are in the same boat as me. They may complain about the lack of user-expandability, but they'll find a way to do everything they need to do. Many will complain that things aran't the way they used to be, but this has ALWAYS been the case with each new major generation of Apple hardware. People complained when Apple dropped floppy drives. They complained when Apple dropped the serial connector. They complained when Apple dropped the optical drive from the iMac and all the portables but the Macbook Pro. Apple does this by design, generally. They force people to get rid of their shitty old floppy drives. Quit looking backward, start looking forward. People will complain, at first, then a few years later they'll understand why Apple forced the issue. Does anybody NOW question why Apple killed the floppy drive, the serial port? Soon, it will be the same with even the ubiquitous optical drive.

I've been following Apple for a long time and have seen this cycle of crying and moaning over and over. Some generations of Pro machines have been better received, others worse received. There has ALWAYS been complaining, and a large number of people always throw their hands up in despair and say "Apple has forsaken me -- I guess I'm switching to Dell (or IBM or Silicon Graphics or Sun Sparc or fill in the blank)." I'm not saying their complaints never have any merit -- just that there is always complaining, always a lot of talk about how Apple has clearly blown it and will now irrevocably lose the Pro user.

Also, I think many of the people laughing about the Mac Pro (It's small! It looks like a trash can! Is Darth Vader living inside?) are just being silly. This is a power machine for serious work.

Having said all the above, I do think Apple has let down a small segment of its professional users. As the guy in the video above says, for SOME people, having 4 internal, always-connected, always-powered, maxed-out SSD drives is a huge benefit. Telling those people to just add stack after stack of external drives is an answer, but not really a good answer.

Also, many such users have unusual needs for graphics processing or i/o options not easily convertible to Thunderbolt. What if you have thousands of dollars worth of PCI Express cards? Yes, you could buy a Thunderbolt PCI expansion chassis, but it seems like we're saying over and over "just do it through Thunderbolt." It's not as if these machines have 24 Thunderbolt 2 ports. At some point, all your Thunderbolt ports are used-up, your bandwidth maxed, and you want to add one more thing.

Bottom line, those of us who aren't REALLY "Pro" users, or who are only on the border of "Pro" level requirements as far as processing power and expandability, will do just fine. In fact, I'm not sure I need to buy something as powerful as one of these. They're expensive, and I might do just as well with a maxed-out iMac 27. Computers these days are FAST, when your needs are just digital audio recording/editing, and a bit of graphic design. I could probably get by with a maxed Macbook Pro Retina, too.

But it does seem a shame that Apple has arguably abandoned several niche segments of "Pro" users. It would be different if they marketed a separate Thunderbolt 2 chassis with slots for 8 internal SSDs, a couple of PCI cards, and a whole ton of Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 pass-through ports.

I really do see both sides. I think there's a lot of unnecessary complaining, and many people's needs will be met perfectly well by these machines. At the same time, I think some users really are not well-served by this new Pro. Those users should probably buy a current generation 12-core Pro, put in 64GB RAM and hook up a Thunderbolt 2 SSD RAID, and they'll be OK at least until Apple comes out with a revision or two. Who knows what the third or fourth revision of this generation will be like?

Mike, don´t forget that people usually eat what they get served in the Apple universe and mainly applaud in chorus….at the end i can see in anything something positive even it´s a step backwards.

Example: I was replacing my Macbook Pro (2011) which have 2 HD´s inside (DVD replaced by a caddy for a second HD) as i need more storage. Now with all the new 15´series this isn´t anymore possible as they decide to make the book smaller for "fashion" reasons…moreover now you have to decide right now (when purchasing a new model) for a SSD size…there is NO chance to replace it later by something else yourself….that´s just a stupid and devil behavior.

Same for the Retina display…it´s a joke to force people to go for this nonsense resolution where you can´t recognize anymore things without a magnifier (especially for music programs).

Luckily i bought on the last minutes a previous model (i7, 2.6 Ghz) before the stupid announcement-conference started.

Well, I'm trying to resist my "Apple fanboy" impulse to applaud anything and everything Apple serves up. I do enjoy my Apple hardware, and generally believe in the company in a way that doesn't hold true for other tech companies.

I agree with you that some of these decisions worry me. I feel funny about investing $4,000 in a Mac Pro and never being able to add internal storage or even extra RAM. It's different for a cheaper, simpler piece of hardware. For example, I just receive a base-level Macbook Air at work today, and I understand why size & weight considerations lead Apple to connect the RAM and solid state storage permanently to the motherboard. Yes, I would rather have the option of adding storage later, but I understand why it's difficult with such an extremely compact piece of hardware. This thing really has more in common with my iPad in size than any laptop I've used before, and I think the Air line will evolve more and more into a cousin of the iPad line.

But there should be an option for people who want more options for modification, expansion. Sometimes we buy a piece of hardware today, and don't realize until a year or two later that we want to edit video, or create 3D animations. I think very expensive hardware like this should be expandable internally, even if they are trying to shift emphasis to external connectivity.

I'm kind of unsure how to feel. I still have my old Mac Pro and the thought crossed my mind to try to change the video card and max out the RAM to 32GB and see how much longer it can last!

Also I still have my larger 17" Macbook Pro (also modified with two internal hard drives, as you mentioned) and hate the idea that if I purchased a new Macbook Pro I would not have the option of adding a second internal hard drive.

Working in a Windows and Unix based corporate environment, though, I don't have any illusions about the other options available. There is really nobody else offering solutions that would work for me. I know how to use Windows, all versions, but I don't want to have to use it at home as long as there's a version of Mac hardware that will do the job I need to accomplish.

I noticed that Apple's refurbished store is completely sold out of the "cheese grater" Mac Pro models. I think many people have made the same conclusion we're discussing here, which is that it might be better to grab one of the prior models and upgrade it, rather than jump to the new "trash can" Mac Pro.

I've been very surprised to see how well these retain their value. I saw people selling the same 1,1 Mac Pro that I have, with less RAM and less hard drive capacity, for surprising amounts of money. It's made me consider just selling this to someone who doesn't mind being "stuck" with Lion. It would still be a very productive audio recording/editing workstation for somebody.

I've also considered upgrading to a newer, better video card (display performance is really the only weakness of this machine -- when I try to watch HD video in full screen, it's choppy -- though it would probably be OK with a display lower than 2560x1600 res) and trying to make this machine last a little longer.

Was curious and checked the German refurbished shop some minutes ago…same here - nothing at all and i do remember very well at last 5-10 Mac Pro´s on stock when i looked for the Macbook i mentioned earlier…that´s really surprising and probably for the reason you mentioned.

Had also a look on Ebay and (at last here) there are some few sellers still having the previous model. Really curious if Apple is making business with the new model! Maybe they do the same U-turn like Microsoft did with XP

Remember the new model isn't even shipping yet. It would be hard to gauge how well it's received until people are receiving it and using it. I expect there will be many excited users saying "Wow, this is insanely fast and quiet, and I have 3 separate 4k displays connected via HDMI and they all look amazing…" that sort of thing.

The people who will be disappointed -- those we discussed earlier, who need lots of internal expansion capabilities -- already know they will be disappointed based on the specs announced. They probably won't be surprised, positively or negatively.

I expect there will be many excited users saying "Wow, this is insanely fast and quiet, and I have 3 separate 4k displays connected via HDMI and they all look amazing…" that sort of thing.

LOL Very likely!

Quote from: mgriffin

The people who will be disappointed -- those we discussed earlier, who need lots of internal expansion capabilities -- already know they will be disappointed based on the specs announced. They probably won't be surprised, positively or negatively.

I´m not sure about that…as we see in the video (and also other places) there are quite a lot of complains about it even before available….usually this happened very seldom with new stuff by Apple! I assume (pro) customers in this time are more aware and having good comparison options (especially to the previous model).

If I was shopping I would do Tomas said and go to ebay and look for a used or refurbished Intel MAc Pro with the specs I need....that being said Im certain the new Mac Pro has more than enough power for my needs.

Perhaps we are not looking into the same crystal ball as Apple how actually create the trends and therefore in some part predict / control the future.

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Well it is to early to boycott PCIe, that is a slap in the face for most audio professionals. But yeah they are trying to control the future, just like when they did boycott Adobe Flash, everyone use it...

Everything will be smaller so yeah the PCIe standard will with time just become too much of an big form factor.But it is important to not choose form before performance and function. if we do that there is mobile alternatives such as laptopswhich compromise the performance to get a smaller form factor.

As I said Apple did just recently give a slap in the face for the whole audio pro industry, they are now telling us just must ditch all PCIe and use thunderbolt.well I do not want thunderbolt, it is not mature enough yet, it increase latency and cpu. A lot of people have invested in graphic card and audio cards...I intend to have my RME HDSPe AES for a long time and many of these sound card have atleast a 10 year life span so..yeah Apple is way ahead of its time andit provoes that they either do not give a shit about us, and just focusing on the most profitable users or they have lost their own sense of what the market is requsting.

Most people if you really ask I think would prefer a bigger form factor with higher clock frequency and more powerful in general.

This release feels just a lig a gigantic PR stunt they just want to show that they are still inovating without steve jobs by doing something "unexpected" and "stupid" .But they get a lot of attention, a lot of superficial who want something that looks "different" and "expensive" on there desk will of course applaud. It will appeal to trendy People who just want to live in the illusion that they got something superior light years ahead of anything else, while what they got is just a underclocked cpu with no internal expanssion.

Just as with Intel thunderbolt, Intel has once again giving Apple all rights reserved on the market to use the latest intel cpu they are using , that gives Apple monopoly on the market with that cpu because of the agreement intel has made with apple to not let it out on the PC market. This is the only indication of if the cpu will be released for PC market or not..

So yeah it is hard to compete with monopoly for sure...and that strategy have been used by apple systematically for a long time, they know what they are doing. as long as Apple have monopoly on the cpu it will of course be hard to compete.

There's a difference between Apple saying "We will no longer include this technology (floppy drive, serial port, internal optical drive, PCIe slot) standard in every machine, because we think that tech is on its way out and fewer people will be using it," and Apple saying "We will not allow people to connect this technology to our computers."

If less than 5% of prospective buyers of the new Mac Pro have any intention of installing PCIe devices, maybe Apple's decision to remove PCIe as a standard option can be justified. You can still use PCIe with the new Mac Pro -- you just have to buy a Thunderbolt breakout box. Yes, they're expensive. Yes, I would be mad if I depended on PCIe for my audio interface, and needed to buy one of these.

I think it has been clear for several years that personal computing is moving away from internal cards for expansion, toward externally connected devices. I'm not arguing that I agree completely with Apple's design decisions, just saying that maybe the assertion that they are intentionally trying to insult or harm their user base might be a bit off the mark. Every company makes decisions about which users and devices and technologies to support, and which not to support. Apple is well known for de-emphasizing backward compatibility in favor of trying to push new technological standards. If this annoys you, then I am surprised you would be considering using Apple computers at all.

I am not a apple user. Moving away... I am not sure...PCIe cards is still considered to have the best performance and latency, especially the RME MADI FX cards...You can't do that with thunderbolt with such low latency. If you do not care about latency or performance then Thunderbolt will work for you.If you use a lot of software synths and effects, latency is important. It is still a slap in the face. To use a break out box for PCIe of course makes me laugh. But yeah atleast it does work, but to then claim that apple is a better solution then PC..I am not sure how you would reason.

The Mac pro should be called mac pro portable, and they could keep tue usual mac pro mid tower series... and everyone would be happy.But to force everyone to use thunderbolt is stupid and respectless, apples message to us is now "you must start use thunderbolt or fuck off"

5% there is a lot more people than that that use PCIe for sure.

However, Apple will now force the market to change and make more thunderbolt devices that is a direct consequence...Another direct consequence is that a lot more people will start using PC solutions cause in reality a lot of people think the new mac pro is a disaster in many ways.

Mike, don´t forget that people usually eat what they get served in the Apple universe and mainly applaud in chorus….at the end i can see in anything something positive even it´s a step backwards.

Good written, yeah it is correct, the apple users will of course gratefully eat everything that is thrown to them... cause what ever choice do they have ?Studies shows that Apples userbase is the most loyal in the world... even if apple release a bad product in the way the psychology is that with displacement they do everything in their own power and they try to find ways to rationalize to protect themselves and there loyalism...if you are stuck in the apple swamp it is usually very hard to move from it.. Now when the new Mac PRO has no PCIe, all of the sudden every one who use apple think PCIe is obsolete and thunderbolt is the new big thing and should be used for everything.

I started out as a PC guy hard core. Then I got a mac, and now I have banned the use of PC's in my house by my wife and children. In other words, get a computer that works, Dad is no longer tech support, ha ha.

Now here is the irony...my home internet and music listening computer is a 2011 iMac, my work computer and the one I use for remote recording, video editing and photoshop is a 17" maxed out Macbook Pro, BUT my studio computer which I use for tracking band, mixing and sound design is a purpose built PC.

I am tired of the conflicts and crashes. It crashes once per session minimum and I know its some sort of war between my PCIe cards and I am tired of trouble shooting it and living with it.

So I was thinking new MacPro! but darn thats expensive! And now I am finding speculation from many forums, not just here that it is so far over powered for most musicians that it may not be cost effective. So now I am thinking of a Mac Mini server. Either way I need external drives, and an external Thunderbolt enclosure for my Uad2 cards.

Part of this decision is also based on the fact that I am wanting to sell my 16 channel Lynx Aurora and 2PCIe AES 16 cards and get an Apogee Symphony system.

Ohhh the decisions

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My humble advice re: the new Mac Pro....wait. The machine isn't even out yet. It's too soon to jump to conclusions. Let the early adopters road test it and shake the bugs out. Let them figure out how to integrate their workflow back into a new system.

As a video editor, who has gone through Avid Media Composer, the old (very glitchy)Adobe Premiere, the first versions of Final Cut Pro, and all their attendant hardware and software needs and/or limitations, if there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is that we figure out how to adapt and overcome. Then we learn how to improve on what Apple has done.

Apple hasn't spent all this time and money on an exotic design and brought the manufacture of a desktop Mac back to the US just to have it fail. They will be watching to see how it is received and how professionals bring it into their pipeline. My guess is that it will take some time, since Thunderbolt breakout boxes will be expensive and people will probably jury-rig some of their existing gear to make it work with the new hardware. But they will make it work. And the new peripherals will make their way into the wild, as well. We will mourn the passing of yet more hardware standards that Apple pioneered(farewell, Firewire) and adopt new ones.

Hardware and software are restless animals that have to evolve. And evolution is never without conflict and short-term chaos. Relax and watch the show. You'll know sooner or later, whether you can find a use for this new generation of Macs.

I mentioned earlier that the time has come for me to upgrade my primary home/studio desktop computer. My original Mac Pro no longer supports the latest versions of Mac OS and while it works fine, and accomplishes everything I need it to do, it's been a long run. I'm ready to set this machine aside and get a new one.

Like Paul, I briefly considered a Mac Mini for my new machine, but the RAM maximum is 16GB and I wanted 32. I also considered a Macbook Pro 15" retina (which can be upgraded to 32GB), but much of the price of those devices is due to the portability, which I don't need. I already have a laptop (actually two, one for work and one for home) and just need a fast, stable machine to sit on the desk in my studio.

I had planned to wait until the new Mac Pro was released and check the reviews and tests, then make my decision between the Mac Pro and the top-of-the line existing iMac. I thought about it, though, and decided that the maxed-out 27" iMac is already more than powerful enough for my needs, not only today but for the coming years. What would the Mac Pro be capable of that would be worth the extra $1,000 or $1,200 or more, for a similar specification (other than the Mac Pro being faster still)? It would be fun to have the coolest, fastest new machine, but that isn't my reason for buying a new computer. I can use the money I'll save to purchase a second 27" Thunderbolt display to match the iMac.

That was the direction I was leaning, and then I read some tests and benchmarks of the 2013 iMac, on Barefeets and elsewhere, which made clear that the new iMac (particularly the i7 option, and the SSD or Fusion drive option) was actually quite a bit faster than the most recent Xeon Mac Pro in most tests. That was enough for me. The new 27"iMac is so dramatically faster than the machine I'm using that I can't imagine I'll find myself wishing I had purchased the new Mac Pro instead. The only reason I would recommend someone seek out a used cheese grater Mac Pro would be if they needed PCIe, which I don't. My devices are all firewire, USB, ethernet and bluetooth, all of which will work fine with the iMac.

Other than the usual, low-processor computing (email, web browsing, text editing), the only apps I'm using that take up much RAM or CPU are Photoshop, InDesign, Ableton Live, Logic, Studio One and the various Native Instruments Komplete apps. All these run just fine on my existing Mac Pro, which is about 8 years old, and 5 revisions behind the 6-core Xeon model the 2013 iMac bested in all the benchmarks I just saw.

I upgraded the processor to the i7, upgraded the internal storage to the 3TB Fusion drive (a nifty hybrid of SSD and hard drive), but did not upgrade the video card from the standard. I will upgrade the RAM from 8GB to 32GB using third party RAM - Apple's price of $600 for this upgrade is too high. I can purchase 32TB of RAM for under $400, and sell back the 8GB for $38 or something.

I'm not posting this to try to persuade others to buy the new iMac, just explaining my own thought process in selecting one machine rather than another. This will be the first time since the 1990s that I won't have one of Apple's "Pro" desktops at the center of my studio, but of course the switch from old Mac Pro to new iMac will represent a significant increase in capability, and that's what really counts.